Listen when users tell you they have a problem

So - warn users about any known issues. Tell them how to report anything that doesn't look right.

And when they do flag up something odd, treat it seriously, because it’s likely to be your fault and not theirs.

Tell the right things to the right people

FitStar must have some idea where I live. They know enough to prevent me seeing FitStar Radio. So they should have been able to send me an appropriate launch mail, so they didn’t offer me features I can’t use.

When you have an issue or change that only affects a subset of your users, tell only those users.

If you can’t manage that, you need to make the applicability clear up front. Don’t bury the detail away in some blog post that no one will ever find.

What do users really care about?

Before you do a launch, think about whether your users will care. Is it even worth taking up their time to tell them you redesigned your app or your website? Disrupting them for something they don’t care about needs an apology, not a fanfare.

In this case, FitStar did change something I cared about. The problem is, they saw it as an improvement, whereas I saw it as a problem.

But then, FitStar don’t know what I care about because they never asked.

There are so many ways to find out what users think. And often we’re pretty good at applying those ideas when we’re designing new services or features. We just need to remember to take our users into account when we’re launching those new features, too.

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and buy the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use myself and believe will add value to my readers.